Category Archives: Lifestyle

What Language Do You Dream In?

February 1, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp Leave a comment

Sometimes people ask me what language I dream in. I’m not sure that I really dream in any language but I guess it depends on what the dream’s about. I’m a translator by trade and when you’re working with two languages all day, you don’t necessarily know which one you’re speaking, let alone dreaming. I can remember once being asked by the tax department to come and fix up my GST cheque which contained an error. I went in and looked at the cheque carefully for a few minutes but still couldn’t see what the problem was. They pointed out that the amount was written half in English and half in French!

When I chose to leave Australia and live in France, I didn’t really know what I was going to. I only knew what I was leaving. I’ve never looked back and never been homesick. That doesn’t mean that I don’t miss my family. I do, especially now that I have four nephews in Australia. But I love living in France. One of the things I like best is that you have greater freedom to be yourself when you live in another country and speak another language. You’re not bound by the same traditions and restrictions. To start off with, you don’t necessarily know that you’re doing something different.

I don’t mean that I want to be outrageous. I just want to be able to act spontaneously without having to worry about what other people say. Once I was in Townsville in the summer and was wearing a fuschia-coloured dress. I was told that it was not a summer colour and that I shouldn’t wear it! I was told in France that I had could only serve rice or potatoes with fish and that rice was never served with red meat, only with veal. In a meeting or a class in France, you’re supposed to put your hand up when you want to talk. None of this spontaneous discussion that goes on in Australia. But I’ve noticed in staff meetings now that some of my French colleagues are following my example.

Expressing emotion is very different here. If something goes wrong, everybody gets excited about it. They drop everything else they’re doing and try to solve the problem together. Leonardo who’s just moved to Australia was telling me about an incident in his first job there. A problem occurred and his team was supposed to be looking after it. Two hours later, the boss called them in and got very angry because they hadn’t found a solution. Leonardo didn’t even know there was a problem. He was mystified because he hadn’t felt any vibes despite the fact that he was working in the same room as the other people involved.

Yet, at the same time, people never interfere in other people’s lives. I once hadn’t seen my neighbour for several days yet her cat seemed to be prowling around. Since she was depressive, I was worried. I went to see the real estate agent who was selling her flat and he came and checked there was nothing wrong. As it turned out, she’d just gone away for a few days. Relationnel thought I was interfering but I was relieved to know nothing had happened to her.

Another thing I like is that when there are differences in customs and attitudes, you ask yourself why. And that must surely help you gain a better understanding of people and life in general. It certainly makes you more tolerant and open-minded. Some traditions were developed for reasons that are still valid today, while others no longer make any sense. When you have the experience of two different cultures, you can choose the best of both worlds!

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Australia, Australian customs, France, French customs, Lifestyle

An Aussie in France on My French Life

January 26, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 1 Comment

theatre_royal — Corner of the Théâtre Royal

I’m delighted to have joined the My French Life team of contributing authors, photographers, interviewers and talented people who live all around the world.

My French Life /Ma Vie Française – online magazine & global community of French & francophiles – Connect, Share, Inspire, Aspire, Learn…

Local Events/Réunions monthly in Paris & soon elsewhere – 7 every month in Ville de Melbourne, Australia

Click here for my introductory post.

“Maybe it was the Latin mass that started it all. I loved chanting away in a language that wasn’t my own even if I didn’t know what I was saying. So when I started to learn French at high school, I was delighted. And it all fitted together so well, just like a puzzle. I actually liked learning verb tenses and vocabulary. I even talked to my dog in French! We had a TV programme at school about a family of four that lived on a barge on a French canal. From Townsville suburbia, it looked like paradise”. Read more

France, Lifestyle

Me and My Tom Tom

January 25, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 14 Comments

How come I don’t understand what my Tom Tom’s telling me to do? I bought one a few years ago for Relationnel but I’ve hardly ever used it. Now that we live in the middle of Paris, I rarely drive because it’s mostly just as fast to take the metro or the bus inside the city and when we go into the country, Relationnel always takes the wheel. I’d much rather look at the scenary or talk to Black Cat or snooze. So I’m used to hearing the Tom Tom but not to following the instructions.

I practically turned round in circles in the 16th arrondissement the other day trying to understand where I was supposed to be going and yesterday, when I was going to the sales at Usine Center in the north of Paris, I overshot the turnoff completely. Relationnel tells me I should be watching the screen as well. But I have to confess it doesn’t really help! Maybe it’s just a question of practice. I certainly hope so because once we start going down to Blois more often I’ll be driving to a lot more in places I don’t know, not like in Paris where I can usually navigate pretty well, even around Place de l’Etoile.

In French, they call it a “GPS” but I noticed when some friends friends came over from Australia recently, they called it a Tom Tom. I must say it’s extremely useful when we travel to other countries. I can remember some terrible arguments in Italy especially when I didn’t manage to direct us where we should, one of the main reasons being that Relationnel follows his sense of direction which doesn’t work too well when there are one-way streets. I remember one horrendous day in Pisa when the river kept getting in the way.

But now that he’s got the Tom Tom to talk back to, I don’t have to navigate any more. “Faites demi-tour dès que possible” it says imperiously (I’ve got the voice down to a pat) when we’re going in the opposite direction. “Vous êtes arrivé” (with the liaison and all) when we reach our destination. “Tournez immédiatement à gauche. Tournez à gauche. Tournez à gauche!” in desperation when you’re about to miss the turn. The trouble is I miss it anyway. The voice sounds so real that we start explaining what we’re doing! “Hang on. We need to get petrol.” or “We’re going to the supermarket first” (me) or “That couldn’t possibly be right” or “No way. I’m not taking that direction” (Relationnel).

We tried using a man’s voice but neither of us liked it. I’ll let you look for the psychology behind that.

I could try putting it in English I suppose. Maybe I would understand better. Do you have problems with your Tom Tom?

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Lifestyle, Paris

Twitter Twitter Little Star

January 24, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 18 Comments

Until I started blogging last October, I didn’t even know what Twitter was. Not that I’d taken much interest. But my “how to become an expert blogger” course said it was important to sign up to as many social media as possible. So I asked Black Cat about it (she’s a communications manager after all so she should know) and started checking it out. Basically the purpose of Twitter is to write short updates on your life/job in 140 characters or less including spaces. To do so, you have to have a Twitter account and a Twitter handle. My is AussieFrance, for example.

Who reads the tweets, as they are called? Your “followers” do. Whose tweets do you read? Those that you are “following”. How do you follow people and how do they follow you? Well, after you’ve created your Twitter account, by going on www.twitter.com, you fill in your profile. The idea is to introduce yourself in a few snappy words. My profile is “Insights into the French way of life by Fraussie, an Australian living in France. Love reading, writing, travelling, wine, cycling & mushrooms.” followed by Paris, and my blog address.

I don’t know how “snappy” it is but I figure it contains most of the information people need to know about me. Now, if you go onto # Discover, you’ll get a few prompts such as “Who to follow” and “Find friends”. The “Who to follow” is based on people with similar profiles. You can click on one of the little icons and see their profile. If you think you’d like to hear what they have to say, you click “Follow”. They will be notified by email and can either follow you in turn or not. They can be individuals such as me or organisations such as the NY Times or the Guardian, in which case, you’ll see Tweets about the latest news, etc.

If they are bloggers, they will probably be tweeting about their latest posts or something they sell. Once you are following someone, you can tweet them by name, using @. For example, if I want to check whether varieties of wine take a capital letter in English e.g. merlot or Merlot, I can check with Guardian style guide by selecting them and asking the question. They’re pretty good at answering even though they have 19,000 followers! One can only assume there’s more than one person … To reply, you simply click on reply!

There are other ways of finding followers but once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly simple. Once you’re following someone, you can check out who they’re following and follow suit. Another thing you can do is “Retweet” which is similar to the Facebook “Like”. You like someone else’s tweet so you retweet it to all your followers. Using a smart phone is the most useful way of reading and sending tweets. There are lots of applications. I use the official Twitter one. I downloaded TweetDeck as well but haven’t really taken the time to see how it works. Twitter seems more intuitive.

Then there are hashtags as in #. They’re used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet so users can categorise messages e.g. if I’m tweeting about a restaurant in Paris, I can put a hash next to and other users can then click on it to find another tweets on the same restaurant. I don’t use hashtags much for the moment, but it’s my next move!

All that to explain that the new heading on the right of the blog “What I’m Doing” actually corresponds to my Tweets. The funny website addresses are a shortened form that happens automatically when you type in an URL. You can also use Bitly, for example, to do it for you. It saves a lot of space when you have very long addresses such as http://www.aussieinfrance.com/2012/01/washing-machines-i-have-known/ shortened to http://t.co/5g1LLC53!

My latest Twitter experience is a Tweet-up organised in Paris among English speakers. It was held at O-Chateau, a wine bar in rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, just down the road from me. It was great meeting up with people whom I’d already seen on Twitter, including two Australians – Andrea from www.destinationeurope.net and Carina from http://www.carams.fr/blog/. Don’t forget to check out the other blogs and sites in the column on the right from time to time.

And I’d love you to follow me on Twitter by clicking on the Follow AussieFrance button on the top right of the page.

Follow-up post: Little Bo Tweep

Australia, Australian customs, France, French customs, Lifestyle

Washing Machines I Have Known

January 23, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 10 Comments

I grew up in North Queensland with one of those enormous top loading agitator washing machines that could wash huge loads in record time. We had a drip dry cycle which meant that the machine stopped after the last rinse and you could remove whatever you wanted, such as a drip-dry shirt, drain it on the draining board over the huge aluminium sink next to the machine, put it on a hanger and then hang it up under the house (our house was on stilts), dripping water over the concrete floor and yourself in the process. All of which was of no importance because the water had disappeared within an hour. You didn’t even get your shoes wet because you were bare foot anyway.

hand_wringer — This is not my mother! Photo credits : see link below

When we went on holidays to the Island, we stayed in Kooyang Flats which had a laundry down the back with a wringer machine. My sister and I were coopted into helping Mum with the washing. We loved turning the wringer and it was really quite a game, provided it didn’t last too long. Except for Mum of course. She must have hated it! Back breaking work for the woman who actually had to wash clothes for six people when she was on holiday, knowing that her huge agitator machine was sitting idle at home.

As I told you in a recent post, my experience with washing machines when I moved to France was somewhat different. Initially, I just used a laundromat. Speed Queens are used worldwide I’ve discovered. My first machine was a front loader tumble machine and I’ve never had anything else. It was in the kitchen though. I was horrified the first time I saw a washing machine next to someone’s fridge. There’s no real reason it shouldn’t be there, but it seemed strange. There are three basic reasons for this: practically no one in an apartment has a laundry room, the bathroom’s usually too small and you need a water connection.

I always made sure I washed the clothes when Leonardo was awake because he used to sit mesmerised in front of the machine the whole time. We didn’t have a TV then. He’s always been mechanically minded. I like to think that I was partly responsible for that. If you’ve ever used one of those machines in France, you’ve probably wondered why the cycles are so long. My normal 40° cycle is 1 hour 17 minutes (my current machine has an electronic display) and the 60° cycle is 2 hours 15 minutes. Well, the reason is very simple even though it took me ages to discover it. They are all connected to a cold water supply so they have to heat up the water which obviously takes time.

When my parents used come to my place on holidays in the winter (I was living in a house in the suburbs of Paris at that time with a sort of back veranda next to the kitchen that had very handy lines that I used during the summer months), they would insist on drip drying their clothes. The only thing they didn’t seem to be able to quite comprehend was that, number one, it was cold outside which meant that it would take days for the clothes to dry, and number two, the dripping water didn’t magically disappear the way it did in North Queensland. I didn’t have any drip-dry clothes myself.

But there are other types of washing machines in France that I have experienced when on holidays in the country. They are top-loading tumble machines. Inside, there is a drum that revolves clockwise from the back to the front of the machine which means that the drum has to be tightly closed or the clothes will fall out. It comes with a unique opening/closing system where you have to match up some catches that are not easy to identify, then press on a not-always-obvious button. Of course few people really know how to manoeuvre the closing system and the opening has to be in the right place for you to do so. When the machine stops, the opening is usually at the bottom of the machine. Then as you take the clothes out, you can be absolutely sure that a baby sock will slip down the side of the drum, unbeknown to you, and cause the mechanism to seize up next time the machine is used. This is not necessarily your baby sock of course. You may just happen to be the next guest. For a long time, these machines were incomprehensibly the most popular in France. They still are to a certain extent because you can get ones that are 40 cm wide instead of the usual 60, a big boon in small bathrooms and kitchens. N’est-ce pas Leonardo?

Kooyang Holiday Units, 13 Hayles Avenue, Arcadia, Qld 4819, 07 4778 5570

Photo credit (not my mother!): http://www.yourememberthat.com/media/10392/Wringer_Washing_Machine/

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Food, Lifestyle

How I lost 20 kilos after 50, for good – Part 2

January 22, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 29 Comments

italy_may_2010 — In Italy six months after the diet began & 12 kilos lighter

Last week, in Part 1, I told you about the first nutritionist I saw when I decided to go on a diet (after listening to weight-loss hypnosis tapes first, remember), a guilt-inducing naturally skinny Asian doctor. The second person I saw was much better – a very smiley touchy-feely doctor from Martinique, Marie-Antoinette Séjean, who is the author of two diet and nutrition books, and who, although slim, was obviously not a natural skinny. I told her about my previous experience and she said not to worry, that we’d work something out together. She told me to write down everything I ate during the next two weeks. She also reassured me that I wouldn’t have to give up anything permanently, including red meat, prunes and foie gras.

In the meantime, she suggested several things I could do to lose weight:

Chinese bowl with quinoa

Cut out all wheat-based foods for 3 weeks because wheat has a bloating effect. She suggested rice, quinoa (I’d never heard of it but now really like it), buckwheat and polenta instead. She reassured me that it was only for three weeks.
Cut out raw vegetables for 3 weeks for the same reason.
Divide my plate into four: ¼ protein, ¼ carbs, ½ cooked vegetables.
Don’t worry about actual quantities, except for the carbs, which should correspond to the contents of a Chinese bowl (when cooked) and should be eaten at every meal.
Make sure I was getting 200 g of protein for breakfast. This is because the protein stops you getting hungry mid-morning and when you lose weight, you lose fat and not muscle. We decided on an egg, a yogurt (they come in individual 90 g pots here) and a 100 g pot of fromage blanc (this is a soft, fresh cheese, vaguely like cottage cheese but not salty, with roughly the same nutritional value and consistency as yogurt), 2 pieces of buttered Swedish bread (even though it contains some wheat, but I’d been eating that for breakfast for years and couldn’t bear the thought of giving it up) and a piece of fresh fruit or small glass of fresh orange juice, eaten AFTER the protein.

plate_in_four — 1/4 protein 1/4 carbs 1/2 cooked vegetables

It all seemed very reasonable and manageable. I had told her I wasn’t interested in losing weight quickly, but I did want it to be permanent. I asked about exercise (long-forgotten apart from cycling in the summer) but she said not to worry about it for the moment. She weighed me and took all my measurements. She explained that it’s important to look at body measurements as well and not just weight, because you stay the same weight on the scales but lose centimetres around your body. I made an appointment for two weeks’ time, just before Christmas! It was only when I got home that I realised I hadn’t mentioned the wine. So I decided to cut down to one glass at lunch and two at dinner, except for oysters on Sundays when we usually drank a bottle of sancerre between us.

Next installment in two weeks’ time! You can start writing down what you’re eating every day as well. Be honest with yourself and don’t leave anything out. Remember, the aim is not to eliminate anything, just to be really aware of what you’re eating. But you might just find that you’re cutting down anyway …

Dr Marie-Antoinette Séjean, 81 rue des Belles Feuilles, 75116 Paris. 01 44 05 16 15

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Lifestyle, Paris

I am not a real Parisienne

January 20, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 5 Comments

facade — Le Bon Marché founded in 1838 by the Videau brothers

Today, it was proved, once and for all, that I am not a real Parisienne. Primo (as the French say), I am not a shopper. Secundo, I went into Le Bon Marché department store in the chic 7th arrondissement for the first time and had never heard of 90% of the brand names in the women’s fashion department. Tertio (that’s even more suave), I took the bus home in the wrong direction. And worse, I asked the lady next to me which direction it was going in and STILL got it wrong. I obviously didn’t realise my mistake until I looked up and saw the Montparnasse Tower. I got out, crossed the road and missed the right bus by about 1 minute. Sigh. I cheered myself up by using my Mobiletag iPhone app to see when the next bus was coming.

The elegant escalators inside Le Bon Marché

I’ve thought about the shopping thing quite a lot and have come to the conclusion that it skips a generation. My mother adored shopping and Black Cat thrives on it as well. I get bored after I’ve looked at a couple of racks of clothes and trying on two items is about my maximum for the day. I’m always hot in the shop and to try something on you have to peel off endless layers in tiny cubicles that you can hardly turn around in and that never have enough hooks. I can put up with it if I go with Relationnel because he’s much more patient than me and will bring me things to try on so I don’t have to get dressed again to go outside the cubicle and have another look. The worst are trousers because you have to take your shoes off and lace them back on again.

sales_dummies — Sad-looking sales dummies wearing "Soldes" round their necks.

It was OK last year after I’d finally taken off my 20 kilos because I got a kick out of the fact that most of the clothes I tried on fitted me and I didn’t look like a sack of potatoes any more. But, sadly, the novelty has worn off. It’s not that I don’t care about the clothes I wear – I do, and there’s the rub. What I prefer is to see something I immediately like in the window on a dummy, preferably with a head and more or less my shape so that I can immediately imagine what it will look like on me. Then I go in, ask for my size, try it on, see that it looks perfect, pay and leave. That has occasionally happened and when I set off, I’m always convinced it will happen again and sadly disappointed when it doesn’t.

inside_garden — Inside garden and café terrace at Le Bon Marché

As far as department stores go – and I am not a fan – Au Bon Marché isn’t bad. They play Mozart concertos over the PA system, all the shop assistants say “hello” to you even when you’re about the bump into them, they have an exhibition called “Lieux d’amour” or Places of Love, a reading room for impatient spouses and a swish-looking Salon de Thé with a garden terrace. I couldn’t believe it when I looked out the first floor windows. It was more like an apartment building than a shop.

But I couldn’t see anything I wanted to buy, especially not the fur jackets.

Places of Love exhibition at Le Bon Marché

When I was little, my mother used to buy things “on appro”. That meant that either she went into the shop, chose a few outfits she liked, got them all packed into bags and took them home with her, or else, she rang up the owner of the shop, told her what sort of occasion she needed the outfit for, and a taxi would arrive a half an hour later at the door with several large bags. I’d then lie on her bed and watch while she tried on everything, in the comfort of her room, with no other shoppers around and no annoying sales people telling her that she looked great even if see didn’t. She could put on the shoes or hat to match and decide in her own good time what she was and wasn’t going to keep.

Now, that’s the way I really want to shop ….

Au Bon Marché, 38 rue de Sèvres, 75007 Paris, 01 45 44 15 48

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French customs, Lifestyle

The Book Seat & Other Nifty Inventions

January 19, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp Leave a comment

I love nifty things so was delighted when Thoughtful gave me The Book Seat for my birthday. And he was even more delighted to tell me it’s an Australian invention! Perfect for reading while I’m having breakfast or lunch by myself! I can also use it to hold up a cookbook.

And while we’re in the kitchen, I’ve discovered that no matter how much you pay for a toaster, you still don’t get perfect toast each time – and I am very fussy about my toast! So I always make sure that the toaster has a large “stop” button so that you can make it pop up immediately if you suspect it’s getting too brown. The other day, I suddenly saw smouldering and the next minute little flames were jumping up because I’d overlapped two pieces. Unfortunately my toaster isn’t quite wide enough to take two pieces of my homemade bread side by side. So these toast tongs often come in handy!

I just love this little guy. One of the things that used to disappear and reappear regularly were my glasses. I only wear them to watch TV when I’ve taken out my contacts so you’d wonder why I can’t put them back in the case each time. I guess it’s just my natural messiness. Having such a nifty little guy to look after them is perfect. Now I can always find them. The little guy comes in all sorts of colours and I bought them in La Chaise Longue in rue Croix des Petits Champs.

Now study the spout on this teapot made by Spode in England that I inherited from my mother. It doesn’t drip. Unfortunately it only makes one cuppa and I’m definitely a multi-cuppa tea drinker.

Now take a look at this one from Gien in France. You can see that the spout doesn’t have a sharp edge and it’s tilted in a different way. My experience with French teapots is that they all drip. I don’t understand why they don’t just copy the spouts on English teapots! One day, I decided I was going to solve the problem so looked up the Internet and found several drip stoppers, but none of them matched my teapot and certainly not the red Ladybug Tea Drip Catcher or the one that looks like a slice of orange with a hole in the middle.

But I was convinced that something suitable must exist somewhere so last Christmas when we went shopping in Rouen, I went into every likely shop. The shop assistants looked at me blankly. Then finally, a woman said, “They’re over here” and there they were, admittedly not the most attractive thing around, but still discreet enough (well, I’ll let you judge for yourself) to make my teapot usable again. We went back this Christmas to get some more and, would you believe it, we couldn’t find the shop again!

If you want to know more about why teapots drip, you can read all about it here.

So what are your favourite nifty inventions?

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Australian customs, Food, French customs, Lifestyle

An Aussie in France Makes History!

January 17, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 13 Comments

I believe that I reached a turning point in my history as an Aussie in France today. The butcher gave me exactly what I wanted. An entrecôte, well hung (the best meat is always a dark red colour and not bright red which means it’s too fresh), 600 grammes. It weighed in at 595 grammes and he didn’t even ask where Relationnel was. I would have forgiven him for that, mind you, because after my first attempts to buy meat in Rue Montorgueil , I stopped going by myself and now just mostly tag along with Relationnel because he’s French and the butcher gives him what he asks for.

It’s not that I don’t speak French. But I have just enough accent for people to know I’m not a local. I didn’t have this problem when I lived in the suburbs of Paris. At the market in Nogent sur Marne, I was known as “l’Anglaise” and they liked me and treated me like a normal customer. But after I moved into the centre of Paris, I was suddenly taken for a foreigner. It was most disconcerting particularly since I even have dual citizenship now.

Sometimes people ask me what language I dream in. I’m not sure that I really dream in any language but I guess it depends on what the dream’s about. I’m a translator by trade and when you’re working with two languages all day, you don’t necessarily know which one you’re speaking, let alone dreaming. I can remember once being asked by the French tax department to come and fix up my VAT (GST) cheque which contained an error. I went in and looked at the cheque for a few minutes but still couldn’t see what the problem was. They pointed out that the amount was written half in English and half in French!

I don’t mean that I want to be outrageous. I just want to be able to act spontaneously without having to worry about what other people say. Once I was in Townsville in the summer and was wearing a fuschia-coloured dress that I bought in France. I was told that it was not a summer colour and that I shouldn’t wear it! I was told in France that I could only serve rice or potatoes with fish and that rice was never served with red meat, only with veal. In a meeting or a class in France, you’re supposed to put your hand up when you want to talk. None of this spontaneous discussion that goes on in Australia. But I’ve noticed in staff meetings now that some of my French colleagues are following my example.

Another thing I like is that when there are differences, you ask yourself why. And that must surely help you gain a better understanding of people and life in general. It certainly makes you more tolerant and open-minded. Some traditions were developed for reasons that are still valid today, while others no longer make any sense. When you have the experience of two different cultures, you can choose the best of both worlds!

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Dieting, Lifestyle

How I lost 20 kilos after 50, for good – Part 1

January 15, 2012 Rosemary Kneipp 16 Comments

mai_2009 — A pause from cycling May 2009

Now there is something important you need to know if you want to lose a lot of weight. The more weight you have put on, the more quickly you will continue to put it on. Where, in your slimmer days, you could eat overeat for a couple of days and nothing happened, once you are really overweight, you can be sure that the kilos will just pile on. The aim is to get back to the “point of equilibrium” at which little extras from time to time will make no difference and, if they do, you can quickly get back to your normal weight.

I knew I couldn’t just keep putting on weight indefinitely or I’d end up looking like a whale but I was repeatedly told that after 50, it was pointless even trying. I’d got used to having one or two glasses of wine at lunch time (Relationnel comes home every day) and two or three at night (remember, we’re wine buffs!) and lots of red meat, even though I’ve always been a big vegetable eater. Also, I work at home and a little snack is never far away. Even if I don’t stock up on snack foods, there is always something to eat even if it’s just a yoghurt or a piece of bread. When we went away for a long weekends, we would take foie gras with us to accompany our champagne every night then eat a whole côte de boeuf cooked on the open hearth between us with potatoes and crème fraîche and fresh chives.

I was having more and more sleeping problems so I ended up going to see a sleep doctor. She gave me one those sleep analysis machines to take home because she suspected me of having sleep apnea. Well, I did. I was absolutely furious, particularly when I looked up the Internet and saw that there were three remedies – a noisy ventilating machine to make sure you don’t stop breathing (guaranteed to send your partner into another room), a very sexy apparatus to wear in your mouth (now that won’t keep your partner in the bed either) and losing a large amount of weight (more conducive to keeping your partner in the bed). I rang the doctor and told her, rather belligerently, I must admit, that I would rather die from sleep apnea than go on a machine. She told me to make another appointment.

The first thing I did when I arrived was to tell her I’d eliminated the sexy mouth thing as well. That only left the possibility of weight loss. Looking me very skeptically, she said I would need to lose 7 or 8 kilos and to come back when I’d lost 4. Summer was coming up, she said, and it’d be easier. Yeah, just when I was going off to Australia for five weeks. Definitely easier …

glenmore_2009 — August 2009, my most embarrassing photo!

I went home and mulled it over. I found a sleep hypnonsis tape (well, an mp3) on the Internet and thought I’d give it a try since she hadn’t helped me with my sleep problems. After a few weeks, I went back on the website and saw they had a couple of weight loss ones as well. I listened to them for about 6 months just for relaxation, alternating with the sleep ones and without making any attempt to diet. Meanwhile I put on a couple more kilos in Australia just for good measure.

Finally, in November, I felt I was ready to attack the diet and went to see a nutritionist recommended by a friend. I came out in tears. She was this naturally skinny Asian lady who didn’t smile once the whole time I was there. I was supposed to cut out red meat forever (you gotta be joking), eat ham for breakfast (I hate ham) and take all sorts of expensive supplements. She threw up her hands in horror when I said I ate prunes for breakfast. I didn’t go back but decided to apply the diet anyway (except for the ham, the red meat and the supplements) and look for another nutritionist.

Although I can’t prove it of course, I am absolutely convinced that the hypnosis tapes played a very important role in my successful weight loss. I don’t know what was in them because I always fell asleep after about 10 minutes but they obviously worked on my psyche so that one day I was ready to change my eating habits. So check out the internet – there are plenty of tapes up there (I can’t find the site where I got mine and they were in French anyway) and I’ll tell you about my second nutritionist next week!

The Natural Skinnies and Us

How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 2

How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 3

How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 4

How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 5

How I lost 20 kilos after 50 – for good: Part 6